


Awakening

by jinjadaebak



Series: Familiar Yet Strange Path [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lucky One (Music Video), Alternate Universe - MAMA (Music Video), Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7224736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinjadaebak/pseuds/jinjadaebak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are experiments with no feelings, thoughts or memories. So why are they starting to remember a world outside of these bare white walls?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. EX-12

**Author's Note:**

> Like so many other wonderful writers, I was inspired by Lucky One. There is a whole world waiting to come to life and I have so many ideas to go along with MAMA because I love their powers concept.

EX-12

Waking up with his arms and legs bound to the bed, Experiment Twelve attempts to pull his arms together only to be held back. Tugging on the handcuffs he knits his brows together. Beside him an IV drips slowly into his arm, keeping his mind foggy. He isn’t quite sure how he knows his mind is being purposefully clouded but he knows that something isn’t right.

He doesn’t understand why he’s tied up. The last thing he remembers is feeling an overwhelming wave of confusion, frustration, and anger before putting a hole in the pristine white wall of the room he is usually kept it.

That alone causes him to pause, contemplative. Emotions and memories were mere concepts and not something he’s experienced before. Or at least that’s what he’s been lead to believe. He is suddenly taken back when a memory takes over. A memory filled with confusion as familiar face’s twist in pain and contort, crying, shouting, fighting-

“Experiment Twelve,” a voice interrupts his thoughts but they’re not talking to him. They’re talking over him to a couple other figures wearing red masks over their faces. The man continues, “Experiment Twelve here had a sudden burst of aggression accompanied by super human strength. Until we can establish what caused it, Experiment Twelve will be kept in containment.”

He watches silently as they leave. The door silently clicking shut behind them.

Tilting his neck to look down at his wrists he pulls on the handcuffs softly before thinking back to the man’s words about his strength and he starts tugging harder and harder on the handcuffs until he watches with wide eyes as the chain on his right wrist starts to pull apart and stretch open.

 


	2. EX-88

EX-88

Looking around the room, Experiment Eighty-Eight watches the other people in the room. A few women in white dresses stand at the side of the other four beds, poking and prodding at the figures occupying the beds while one does the same to him.

Her fingers are cold like the expression on her face and he keeps his eyes trained on her in defiance. He isn’t sure he knows what that emotion is and he isn’t sure if it’s the right emotion to feel right now –this need to fight back and question. He wants to demand answers for things he isn’t sure he understands why he wants answers for. Nothing makes sense anymore but now that he thinks about it nothing has really been clear for a long time. Not since- Not since they were attacked when- he shakes his head in frustration –he can’t remember.

On one of the others beds in the room, a man with the number Twenty-One on his neck is asking questions, a hoarse voice breaking through the usual heavy silence. And he finds the voice oddly familiar; safe. For a moment he considers opening his mouth and attempting to talk as well because he knows he knows how to but part of him wonders if he can.

His thoughts are quickly pulled away from the other men in the room when he feels a sharp pinch in his arm and violently pulls his arm away, glaring at the woman. The expression on his face is mirrored back at him through the reflection coming from the mask the woman wears and he’s caught off guard at his own painfully human expression.

 


	3. EX-04

EX-04

Experiment Four sits up straight on his bed, back pressed against the pillows and his shoulders squared he stares straight ahead, expression void of any emotion, while a man to the left of the bed, in a crisp new lab coat, stares down at the chart in his hand.

On the other side of the bed, a woman stands in a white dress and a full red mask. This isn’t anything unusual. It’s always the same mundane schedule every day, same time, always the same tests. Except today there is this man standing beside his bed, taunting him.

“Experiment Oh-Four,” the man reads, voice awfully cheerful in the dim setting of the room, “how are we doing today? No outbursts like yesterday?”

_Yesterday_. Yesterday was a blur of pent up emotions and a flood of memories that caused Four to scream at the four walls housing him in - _suffocating_ him. He could remember his friends, brothers, the other 'experiments' kept in this institution. The lights had flickered in time with his panting, mocking him; laughing at him. He'd been so angry, shouting names he couldn't put faces to but knows he holds dear to his heart. He'd still been yelling, demanding be set free, when he was restrained and drugged back into submission.

The man on the bed blinks slowly, eyes focusing on nothing at all as his lips part softly, only to maintain silence.

“Not so vocal now, are we?” the man taunts, scuffing lightly when he receives no response. He scribbles on the chart again before looking across the bed to the women, speaking over the figure on the bed, “continue to keep him catatonic, the other experiments are already unstable. Under no circumstances can we have a repeat of what happened yesterday.”

No one notices Experiment Four looking up at the pair with a faint curve to the corner of his lips.

 


	4. EX-21

EX-21

“Why am I here?” Experiment Twenty-One asks, voice even and steady yet raw from lack of use and it does nothing to hide the confusion filtering through a once clouded mind. He takes note of the sterilized room, white walls and the other people in the room. The room is familiar to him, as familiar a place can become after spending an unknown amount of time in one place but it’s foreign, unknown and the air is heavy with suffering.

Aside from the few women in white dresses, there are four other men in the room. They’re familiar to him. Somewhere in the back of his mind Experiment Twenty-One feels something akin to longing, a need to care for others -brothers; _his_ brothers. Looking down, he takes note of the sudden tightness in his chest.

He feels like he’s waking up for the first time.

 


	5. EX-01

EX-01

“We need to keep him separated from the others,” Experiment One hears a woman say as he’s taken into a small room, “the drugs aren’t working anymore.”

Keeping his expression blank, he looks out of the corner of his eye at the other woman pushing the bed he’s occupying. She is eerily quiet and he wonders if that’s what he used to look like. Constantly carrying an expression void of emotion and lifeless – _hopeless_. Broken.

He’s taken into a room he’s never seen before, the complete opposite of the rooms he’s usually in. This one is dark and empty like a void waiting to engulf him. And in the centre he spots a large glass box, large enough to hold an adult.

“Experiment One,” the first woman says, opening the box door while the other woman takes ahold of his arm and directs him into the contraption.

He stands there quietly, watching with curious eyes as they slowly close the lid on him. Slowly the container starts to fill with a thin gas and his eyes start to water as he displays his open palms against the glass, grasping for something - _anything_.

A feeling of dread washes over him and he blinks back the tears in his eyes before he starts banging on the glass harder. Harder and harder he hits the glass with his fist. The nagging feeling that he needs to get out doesn’t go away, get out, he thinks, get out of here.

 _Escape_.

‘Escape with the _others_ ,’ Experiment One thinks to himself, momentarily taken aback by the thought of there being others because how could he have ever forgotten about them. He was -is- their leader.

Their guardian.

“Others.” He murmurs under his breath, barely recognizing his own voice as he starts banging on the glass with even more determination.

 


	6. EX-99

EX-99

This is how their days usually go: sitting or laying on the uncomfortable hospital beds while women in pristine white dresses draw blood, insert IV’s filled with a dark blue liquid Experiment Ninety-Nine finds himself progressively fascinated by. Wondering what it is and why they’re continually given the strange liquid. He started to wonder what would happen without it.

In the room with him today, he notes the four other men in similar attires to his own, the only difference being that of the numbers on their necks.

The woman to his right pulls his arm up, rolling his sleeve up without any warning but he’s so used to the treatment that he doesn’t so much as flinch when the needle pricks through his skin.

However, just when she’s about to insert the IV into his arm, Experiment Ninety-Nine feels himself pulled through his cloudy thoughts when a voice, belonging to another man on a bed with the number Twenty-One around his neck says hoarsely, “Minseok.”

He’s suddenly filled with thoughts, emotions, and memories filled with other people he can vaguely remember. His chest tightens painful, and he can’t help the sudden rush of emotions that hit him, knocking the wind out of him as he lets out a strangled sob. He remembers pain, so much pain and confusion and a strong desire to protect; to keep them safe. He remembers all the hurt and suffering but he also feels a rush of unbearable emotions like love, happiness, and _joy_.

Again he hears the other repeat, “Minseok,” and he tilts his chin to his chest and smiles, hollowly laughing to himself.

His brothers, his younger brothers, he remembers, he remembers growing with them. He remembers learning and laughing with them, crying with them and– he remembers being _attacked_.

Looking up slowly, he turns to Experiment Twenty-One and let’s his lips curl into a soft smile, “Jongdae.”

 


	7. EX-61

EX-61

“Experiment Sixty-One’s body temperature has been gradually rising higher and higher,” Said person hears a man say at the foot of the bed and he sits up in attention. A couple people crowd in around the bed, each and every one of their expressions blank as the man continues, “yesterday his blanket caught on fire.”

His expression stays unmoving as they continue to talk about him as if he isn’t sitting right in front of him and he feels _annoyed_. A tightness grows in his chest and around his throat as if hands are choking the air out of him. He wonders why these people don’t speak to him instead of over him and why they continue to refer to him as an ‘experiment’ as if he isn’t a living and breathing human being sitting right in front of them.

Beside him to his left the screen monitoring his heart rate screams to attention and he looks out of the corner of his eye as the people in his room gradually start stepping back.

With his chest heaving quickly, Experiment Sixty-One looks down at his hands when he notes the heat radiating off of him. It’s almost impossible to hide the smirk that grows on his lips as the look of fear and confusion starts crossing their faces.

He'll set more than his blanket on fire this time, he promises.

 


	8. EX-94

EX-94

Standing in the room, Experiment Ninety-Four turns to look out the large window. It’s the first time he is really noticing the window at all and it’s a curious thing. The fact that he can see others, others like him, through the window and it tugs at something in the back of his mind.

Stepping closer to the window he presses the tips of his fingers to the cool glass, suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of dread as he watches another man being wheeled away on a bed.

Blinking quickly, he pinches the bridge of his nose before tilting his chin to his chest and squeezing his eyes shut. He can remember a wide smile, laughter that wraps around him like a blanket, eight other figures – _home_ \- and his head throbs as the memories continue to scratch at the farthest point of his mind wanting to come out.

“Experiment Ninety-Four,” a voice comes from behind and he turns around slowly, taking note of the other’s on beds in the room with him and momentarily wonders how he’s never really noticed them there before. He’s seen them before in this place, he's sure, but also in the memory that is screaming to come out and his frustration grows as he struggles to understand why they feel so important to him.

“Experiment Ninety-Four,” the voice, a fair woman with a mask over her face says again and he can’t control the irritation he feels at being called that amidst trying to remember who he is. He is not a number, he knows he’s not an experiment, he just knows it but why can’t he place why or whom he really is.

He watches with his brows knit together as the woman’s lips move, probably calling him ‘Experiment Ninety-four’ again but he can’t hear her. There is air rushing through his ears and before he knows it the room is caught in a whirlwind, papers scattering and the windows that he’d been so captivated by are bursting into dozens of pieces.

 


	9. EX-10

EX-10

He’s being carted off on one of the hospital beds that he’s grown so used to spending most of his time on. There is a kind of nervousness in the air, the women in red masks filtering in and out of the rooms in a kind of panic Experiment Ten isn’t sure he understands but he’s oddly not shocked by.

There’s the smell of smoke to his right while a resounding bang vibrates throughout the hall to his left.

“Experiment Ten,” someone calls, but he pays them no mind, turning to look straight ahead at the lights that start to turn off, one by one, through out the hall. Again, they call, “Experiment Ten.”

Slowly, he looks at the person calling him and he frowns.

They call him again when suddenly another man appears in front of his bed as if out of nowhere and he finds himself not shocked by the idea that maybe he really did appear out of nowhere. He thinks he's seen it happen before just like he thinks he's seen a boy with a feline grin command lightning and another control light with a flick of the wrist, or another turn water to ice in a matter of seconds. This man in front of him, with his blonde hair and red-rimmed eyes scream familiarity and Experiment Ten finds himself uncontrollably drawn to the grin married to the other’s face.

“Yixing,” the blonde calls, offering him a hand.

Experiment Ten feels a fog clear from around him as he takes their hand, climbing off the bed.

And they _run_.


End file.
